


Keith is Bad at Feelings and then almost Dies Because He's Bad at Feelings

by demiquaver



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Blade of Marmora Keith (Voltron), Hanahaki AU, M/M, Major Character Injury, Or at least he thinks so, Unrequited Love, keith is bad at feelings, they both are tbh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-11
Updated: 2018-01-11
Packaged: 2019-03-03 16:10:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13344765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/demiquaver/pseuds/demiquaver
Summary: While staying with the Blade of Marmora, Keith realizes how much he misses his team and one blue paladin in particular.





	Keith is Bad at Feelings and then almost Dies Because He's Bad at Feelings

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt 2- The Unrequited Love Poem

Sweat soaked and exhausted, Keith lay in the small bed provided to him by the Blade of Marmora. Normally, after a day training with the Galra rebels, Keith had grown accustomed to returning to the castleship and to his team. For the first time, he was to stay, and not just for one night. Over the course of the next month, the Blade would be visiting multiple different trading and resource planets to restock on various training and daily living materials. Keith’s job on this mission was to act as a representative of Voltron within the Blade, to prove that they weren’t, in fact, part of the empire dominating the universe.

While the others on his team had been extremely reluctant to have him gone for such an extended amount of time, Keith eventually spoke up, making the final decision for himself. He was tired of them arguing for and about him as if he wasn’t even in the room. Like he couldn’t make a single decision for himself.

_“I know you guys have the team’s best interest in mind and you’re just looking out for me, but I can handle myself out there, you just have to trust me. Plus we have six people that can pilot the lions now so you guys will be fine.”_

_Those final words seemed to shock the whole team, Keith included. He knew he had been thinking about it, but he never meant to admit it out loud. Before anyone else could argue against him, Keith cut them all off. “I’m going, and that’s that. I can get more information for all of us on how the Blade functions. I can strengthen the alliance. They can teach me more about Galra fighting styles.” Keith took a deep breath, briefly making eye contact with Allura across the room before turning away to face the nearest wall, crossing his arms. “I know you might not fully trust me, but I can do this.”_

_“Keith-”_

_“Hey, wai-”_

_“Where are you g-”_

_They all tried to call after him, but he was already heading out the door. Kolivan soon followed after, muttering apologies to the princess as he passed._

Looking back at it now, he could see that he may have slightly overreacted to the situation, but who could blame him. So maybe he regretted not saying goodbye to them. Maybe he regretted leaving on such a sour note. What if something happened to one of them during a battle and that was their last memory of him? Okay, so maybe this was just another example of him needing to figure out this whole exploding temper thing, but at least he hadn’t actually insulted or hurt any of them. Just… 3 more movements and he could go back to the castleship and apologize to his team and join them once again on the battlefield.

It had been less than a day and he missed his team already. Against his best efforts, he had actually grown close to the others on his team. He had come to rely on them and their different personalities and hobbies and quirks.

But here, where he knew almost no one, he couldn’t help but feel like something was missing. There was no Shiro to be on older brother to him. Even if he didn't always show it, knowing that there was someone for him to go to no matter what was incredibly comforting. Without that support on hand, it felt like he was constantly walking a tightrope without a net at the bottom to catch him.

There was no one like Pidge with the Blades either. For one thing, there was no one that small, but there wasn't anyone as curious as she was either. No one constantly searching for more information or coming up with new ways to improve their tech. No one really… searching at all, not in the way she did. No one had the drive to learn like she did.

And there definitely wasn’t anyone like Hunk with them. Completely unafraid to point out a bad idea. The first to support his teammates when they needed it, when they just wanted to be cheered up with a smile from a friend and a warm home-cooked meal. No one was more reliable than Hunk. Every one of the blades seemed was much more complicit in following orders and turning in for the night. Despite what they wanted to do, they knew their place below a commanding officer and didn’t hesitate to follow orders. And outside of orders, they all took care of themselves. 

That would be why there wasn’t even anyone remotely close to Lance amongst the ranks of the blades. Almost completely independent, every single one of them seemed to live their lives apart from one another. No one teasing one another while training. No one joking during debriefings to lighten the mood. No one constantly poking in on all of their teammate's lives, just to see how they are doing.

No lingering fingers brushing across his shoulders in passing.

No soft eyes and hands checking him over for injuries after a particularly intense mission or training session.

No light grips around his wrist, trying to pull him into meals and making sure he eats.

No warm hands pushing and guiding him down the hallways back into his room, even if it was sometimes the only way to get him to sleep for the night.

Keith would deny wiping tears from his eyes if anyone had been witness.

It was a complete shock to Keith exactly how much he missed all of them. He thought he was doing a good job of keeping himself distanced from the team. That he wasn’t going to get attached. They were all in constant danger, who knows when one of them wouldn’t make it back to the castleship. What would he do then?

Those ‘team bonding’ movie nights. How would any of them go back to being that relaxed if there was an empty seat? Despite pouting for the beginning of nearly every movie they’ve watched, Keith actually enjoyed them most of the time. They were one of the few times he would actually let himself relax and just enjoy being with the team. Maybe that was the problem.

Or maybe it was the sleepy breakfasts with everyone yawning around the table and cracking half-witted jokes that never made sense. Or maybe it was the exhausted dinners shared after a particularly grueling training day. You know, the ones where no one could muster the energy to talk and so they all ate as quickly as possible before bolting out to shower and to sleep. It could have also just been any of the times where they flew their lion's side by side, or when they fought back to back just doing their best to oppose the galra empire.

Keith falls asleep to these memories, dreams in abstract color. Flashes of red, blue, green, yellow, and black zooming back and forth, intertwining and separating, fading and returning. The longer he watches, the more he can’t help but be distracted by the vibrant blue dancing across his mind.

The next few quintants came and went just as the first had. It was a loneliness that Keith had once been accustomed to, and he could grow into it once more. He had to, if he was going to stay sane until his return to the castleship.

About a movement into the mission Keith had assigned himself, he was beginning to regret it. After one night of his usual abstract color dreams, he woke up and immediately started coughing. It was like there was something stuck in the back of his throat that he just couldn’t dislodge, no matter how hard he tried. Sometime between getting dressed and heading to the dining hall aboard the blade’s ship, the coughing mysteriously disappeared. Just slightly concerned, Keith quickly decided to drop it when the coughing didn't immediately resurface.

There was no way for him to know that he would completely regret that decision before he retired to bed that night. 

After a typical morning of gathering supplies and bartering for the best deal, Keith decided to head off to train by himself. Even though he hadn’t brought his bayard with him, he still had the personal weapon that had gotten him an in with the Blade in the first place.

Just inside the room he had been provided for his training exercises, he brought the newly fixed and reprogrammed sentries to life before stepping back and assuming a fighting stance. Losing track of time, Keith was quickly growing short of breath and slowing his movements. But there were still more sentries for him to fight, so why should he stop now? It was about now, that Lance would typically barge into his training sessions and just assert himself in front of Keith without any regard to how well he had been improving.

But there was no one here to do that now, so he kept going.

That feeling of something becoming stuck in the back if his throat returned from that morning, but he kept going.

Keith’s muscles felt like they were screaming at him to stop and rest, but he kept going. 

The coughing, not just returning, seemed to grow with every passing second. Keith wanted nothing more than to hunch over and curl up and just give in to whatever it was that was fighting to control his lungs, but there was no one else in the room to turn off the bots he was currently facing, so he kept going.

He kept going and going and going until every sentry in front of him was nothing more than a heaping pile of sparking metal.

And then he collapsed. He finally gave in to the coughing. He curled up into a ball and lost all control.

Before long, something finally came up. After working its way from the back of his throat to the tip of his tongue, what else would come out but a small, four-petaled white flower. Or at least he assumed it was white. It was hard to see past his tear-blurred eyes, and the edges of the petals had been stained red with what he could only assume was blood.

The door to the training room opened behind him. Forgetting that he was with the blade and not on the castleship, for one brief moment, he had assumed that it was Lance, coming to pull him out of the training room like he always did when Keith was overexerting himself. Or that it was Shiro coming to bring him into the common rooms for some team bonding exercise. Or that it was Hunk, or Pidge, or Allura, or Coran. He would have taken anyone over the random that stepped in front of him.  
Staring into the eyes of someone whose name he didn't even know, he blacked out.

Slowly gaining consciousness, but not fully awake Keith prepares himself for what he’ll find. He’ll wake up on a random examination table in the Blade of Marmora medical wing. There’ll be some random doctor to give him some sort of medication or injection for whatever space flu he managed to stumble into. He’ll go back to the blades and pretend like he’s okay until he can go back to the castleship and apologize to his whole team for leaving so abruptly. He can do this, he just has to not think about his team for the next two movements and he’ll be back.

Easy, right?

He just has to ignore those brief moments where he thought he heard Lance calling his name from down the hall, or the awkward silences that he knew should be filled by a certain blue paladin making a completely inappropriate and confusing joke. 

He just had to ignore the fact that no one sought him out. Not a single blade would treat him any differently than they did the rest of the blades. He would have to take care of himself. Even if there had always been someone to pull him out of the training room when he had holed himself away for the day. Someone that made sure he ate and socialized enough to not be classified as a hermit. And he had taken it for granted.

But he could do it. He could take care of himself for the rest of the mission. How hard could it be, really?

And yet, that’s all that’s thrown out the window when he opens his eyes to a disappearing screen and a cold fog dissipating at his feet. Keith stumbles forward out of what he immediately recognizes as a cryopod identical to one of those on the castleship. Huh, that’s new. As far as Keith was aware, the Blades didn’t have anything like it. They preferred the much more renewable and stable supplies of traditional medicine.

Wait. Keith recognized this room. He knew where he was. Despite everything that he had been prepared for, he was back in the med bay of the castleship.

The lights were dimmed, so he could assume that he had awoken at some point during the castle’s night cycle, but he was still surprised to not see anyone in the room. Even when they awoke during the night, usually at least Coran was there, just to help them regain their bearing after awakening from their induced sleep.

Just as he was contemplating why exactly no one else was there, he tripped, nearly falling face first into the cold hard ground of the empty med bay. He groaned lowly, accepting his fall for just a moment before he finally twisted around into a sitting position. The sight before him shocked him silent.

He wasn’t alone in the med bay. Seated right before him, at the base of the cryopod he just came out of, was none other than the blue paladin himself. While Keith sat now fully awake, Lance seemed to just be stirring, rubbing the sleep from his eyes and stretching his arms back over his head.

“Lance?” Keith called out, just barely above a whisper. “What’s going on?”

Lance finally opened his eyes, taking in the sight of Keith seated on the floor in front of him. “What are you doing on the floor?”

“I could ask you the same thing,” Keith shot back, crossing his arms in a blatant challenge to Lance’s logic.

“Well Coran wasn’t able to get a specific time on when the cryopod would release you, so I offered to stay and wait for you to wake up, but apparently even in medically induced sleep you like to make people wait.” Lance glared back over at Keith, rising to the challenge just how Keith knew he would. What surprised him was the chuckle that accompanied Lance’s words, significantly diminishing the bite behind his words and making the glare seem almost… playful. “You ended up taking way longer than Coran had estimated and so I fell asleep, but I mean, it’s like 4 in the morning. And anyway, I wasn’t just going to leave you here to wake up by yourself. Coming out of those things is confusing enough on a regular basis, but when you passed out on a completely different ship? Nuh-uh, no way, that’s just cruel and unusual punishment, buddy.”

It looked to be Keith’s turn to be shocked once again, surprised at the sincerity of Lance deciding to wait with Keith until he woke. Even if Lance himself seemed flippant about it, he knew Lance wasn’t ever one for all-nighters or missing his beauty sleep. And the thoughtfulness to figure out what Keith would be thinking coming out of the pod, that took some serious consideration on his part.

“Oh,” Keith whispered. He looked down to the ground between his knees, smiling softly to himself. “Thank you.”

“No prob-”

As soon as Lance started to reply, Keith began coughing once again. Sliding over to Keith’s side. Lance began alternating between tentatively thumping him on the back and rubbing soothing circles between his shoulder blades.

Keith found his voice soon after the coughing fit passed, only slightly scratchier than usual. “Aren’t those pods supposed to heal us?” When Lance seemed to pause, breaking eye contact and not answering right away, Keith pushed even further. He was going to find his answers sooner or later. “What’s going on? Why am I back here and not with the Blade?”

“Long story short,” Lance took in a deep breath, letting out a deep sigh and continuing, “Kolivan brought you back. You passed out on the training deck of their ship and they had no idea what was wrong with you. They had no idea what sort of medical attention you would need.”

“Hmm.” Suddenly, the memory of a small, white, blood-stained flower comes flooding back. The blurred image finally clicks in Keith’s mind. “Wait, it’s not…” His voice trailed off as the severity of the situation is just now crashing down on him. Hanahaki.

_Hanahaki disease- extremely rare and almost always fatal. Flowers born in the agony of unrequited love sinking their roots into the lungs and spreading out until they gain full control of their host._

_Back on Earth, everyone knew about it but very rarely was it ever seen in person. And it was even rarer for anything to be done about the fatal flowers. The only know fix was an extremely invasive and dangerous surgery that would forcibly remove both the flowers themselves from the lungs and would also remove the portion of the brain dictating their growth. Those desperate enough to undergo the surgery lost much of their emotional sensitivity, the unlucky few left nearly catatonic._

The nearly heartbroken look on Lance’s face told Keith everything he needed to know. He was right. He was… He was going to die.

But he was also back on the castleship. He had his team with him. He had...Lance with him. Right now. Lance was at the center of this, wasn’t he? Just the thought sent Keith into another coughing fit, feeling once again like he had the morning before. So that explained the flowers then.

How could someone as incredibly vibrant and deceptively caring as Lance ever like someone as socially inept as his self-proclaimed rival. It just wasn’t realistic. No matter how beautiful he looked sitting cross-legged across from Keith, the low blue lights of the castle dancing in his even brighter blue eyes. No matter how touching it was the  
Lance of all people had decided to stay in the med bay with him, just so he wouldn’t be disoriented when he woke up.

He would spend his last few days with his team, with the closest thing to a family he can remember ever having.

“How long do I have?” The whispered question pierced the tense silence with way more power than five words should ever be allowed.

Lance flinched at the whisper before answering back, “The same as anyone else, maybe a couple days more.” Keith turned towards him, furrowing his eyebrows questioningly, prompting Lance to explain what that meant. “When we put you in the cryopod, we can freeze out the flowers in your lungs.”

“Really?” Keith had a new aura of hope around him. Things were finally looking up. That was, until Keith noticed the grimace Lance was wearing. So there’s more to the story then. “Why can’t we use the cryopod to just fully heal me then?”

“I said the cryopod takes care of the flowers already growing… It does nothing to keep them from coming back. And every time we use the cryopod, the flowers will just come back faster and faster. They’ll be even more aggressive than their predecessors.”

“Oh.”

A few moments pass and the tense silence from before seems to have returned, broken only by Keith’s occasional coughing fits. Every once in a while Lance opened his mouth as if he was going to say something, but backed down every time.

“Do you-

“Thank y-”

Both Lance and Keith tried speaking at the same time before chuckling at themselves. Lance was the first to acknowledge it, quickly speaking up. “Go ahead. What were you saying?” Lance broke eye contact, rubbing the back of his neck nervously and clearly avoiding what he had been trying so hard to say.

“Well..” A light blush began to make its way from Keith’s cheeks all the way to the tips of his ears as he contemplated what he wanted to say. “I just wanted to say thank you. For staying here and, you know, just making sure someone was there for me. I know you’re not big on losing sleep but you stayed anyways and that means a lot to me.” He seemed to get quieter with every word until his voice was nothing more than whisper. “So thank you.”

“Oh, of course, no problem,” Keith’s flush was quickly mirrored on the other boy.

Before he could fall into another coughing fit, Keith leaned forward trying to catch Lance’s eye. “And what was it that you wanted to say?”

The answer that came from Lance was slow coming, but when it finally came out Lance was clear and confident. No matter what the answer, he knew for certain that he wanted to know. “Do you know who it is?”

If Lance’s intentions weren’t clear enough, Keith, at that very moment, broke into his longest coughing fit yet. He could feel the first inklings of petals on the back of his tongue. Despite already being seated on the floor, he curled up even further into himself as he let the coughing take over. It was easier than trying to fight it.

Slowly coming back to himself, Keith knew that in his tightly closed fist would be a small white flower, blood-stained petals and all. And back to Lance’s question, how could he possibly answer that? There was no need to make Lance worry or feel guilty. If he put that burden onto Lance, there’s no way he would be able to enjoy the last few days he has with them, with his team, with his family. So keeping it bottled up it was. He was good at that.

With Keith clearly torn over his question, Lance quickly spoke back up. “You don’t _have_ to tell me! I was just curious. They don’t know what they’re missing anyway.” Lance scooted forward towards Keith. They both sat cross-legged on the hard floor and with Lance’s movements their knees just barely touched. Leaning forward even more, Lance grabbed Keith’s hands, silently asking for his attention. As soon as he looked over to those beautiful blue eyes, there was no way Keith would be able to back out of this.

“Whoever it is, they are the luckiest person in the universe to be the object of your crazy mullet-headed affection.” Keith just scoffed, clearly not believing him. “Seriously! The best pilot of our generation and one of the most amazing fighters in hand-to-hand combat. And, alright, maybe the mullet’s not all bad. Who knows, maybe it’s as soft as it looks.” Lance chuckles at that last part. “And I’ve never met anyone as dedicated to a cause as you are, constantly training. Not mention how you’re always pushing all of us to be better, to keep moving forward in our fight against the Galra Empire. And there’s gotta be a least a few people into stormy grey-violet eyes that look like they hold the secrets to the universe itself. C’mon, completely objectively and by most standards, you are, dare I say, a total catch. Anyone would be lucky to be yours.”

The end of Lance’s speech was followed by a silence more comfortable than any others since Keith had left the cryopod. Keith still looked disbelieving, doing his best to really consider what Lance had said. When described that way, Keith could almost believe him. But he knew the truth deep down. “Your wrong. There is someo-”

“Nope,” Lance cut him off. “This is officially a no negativity zone. I said what I meant and I meant what I said. Anyone.”

Finally breaking eye contact with the other boy, Keith scoffed in disbelief once again. “Even you?”

His whisper was so quick and quiet Lance would have missed if the room wasn’t as absolutely silent as it was. Lance’s shock was evident on his face as he tried to stutter out a coherent response. “What- You- Wait- I mean- That’s kinda- What?”

In his shock, Keith could easily slip his hands out of Lance’s as he began to stand, ready to leave the room and that whole embarrassing conversation behind. He knew it. He should have just kept his mouth shut, but no. He just had to go and ruin everything. What the hell is wrong with him.

Just as he got to his feet ready to head towards the door, there was a loud commotion directly behind him as Lance scrambled to his feet. “Keith wait!” Lance’s hand desperately clinging onto Keith’s wrist was the only thing that kept him from leaving the room right then and there.

At that, Keith turned around to face Lance, slowly entangling his wrist from Lance’s grasp. Lance let out a relieved sigh at the other boy’s apparent agreement to stay. 

“Do you mean what I think you mean?”

Keith looked away at the question, his cheeks flushing once again. He crossed his arms and shrugged, the very picture of nonchalance.

Lance reached out to put his hands on the other boy’s shoulders, making sure Keith really took in what he would say next. “Well, I meant what I said earlier, that statement stands. _Anyone_ would be lucky to be yours.”

Keith nodded, finally allowing a small smile to shine through out of his previous pout. With that settled, the tense air surrounding them seemed to dissipate leaving two smiling--- And there was the coughing again. It only lasted just long enough to startle the boys before disappearing again, but three more small flowers came up in that short time.

“That’s a good sign, right?” Keith asked, sounding very unsure of himself.

Lance answered, sounding just as unsure, “I think so? Maybe they’re just trying to work their way out of your system?”

“I sure hope so.”

“C’mon, let’s go get you some fresh clothes and a nice breakfast.” Lance led the way out and away from the medbay, gesturing behind him for Keith to follow. Not long after the door _whooshes_ closed behind them, Lance began chuckling.

Keith quickly stepped forward, bumping his shoulder against Lance’s. “What’s so funny.”

“I’m just really happy that you chose me.”

Chuckling himself, Keith knocked his shoulder once again into Lance’s, barely harder this time. “Are you always gonna be this sappy?”

“Just because I am a true romantic at heart, doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with that.”

“Hmm, guess not.”

Lance looked off to his side, lost in his own world of thought for just a moment before turning back to face Keith. “I’m also very relieved I no longer have to kick the ass of some random Blade member. I really was not looking forward to that.”

Jolting to a stop, Keith took a minute to really process what Lance had just admitted to. “You would do that for me?”

“Well, duh,” Lance answered, tugging on Keith’s wrist to get him moving again. “Even if you sometimes have to go off with the Blade, you’re still a part of this team.  
You’re still a part of this family, this Space Family, if you will.” A quiet moment passed before Lance tacked on, “I just want you to be happy.”

Smiling at Lance’s sappy, but surprisingly sweet response, Keith shot back, “Well, that’s good then. You know why?”

“Why?”

“Because you make me happy.”

Hiding his blush behind his hands, Lance groaned out a quick, “and you call me sappy.”

The halls change around them as they passed in the relative silence of early mornings aboard the castleship. The farther they got from the medbay, the more Keith recognized where exactly Lance had led them. Just before the door of the common room, Lanced stopped, turning to face Keith.

“I know the rest of the team wants to see you. We all miss you whenever you leave… Do you think we should go wake them?” Despite his efforts to fake a smile, Lance seemed reluctant to pose the question. But that’s not right, Lance loves being around the rest of the team. Unless…

“I can see them later once they wake up themselves,” Keith started, trying his best to sound absolutely casual “Why don’t we hang here for a little while, you know, just the two of us. You’ll stay with me, right?” Lance seemed to light up at Keith’s suggestion, a real smile this time.

They both then moved into the common room, taking seats directly next to each other on the couches. A comfortable silence filled the room as the two boys realized how sleepy they truly were. Before long, Lance’s head was laying on Keith’s shoulder and Keith’s arm was draped across the couch behind Lance.

Before the thralls of sleep could fully claim Lance, he managed to mumble out, “Of course I’ll stay with you. Even if I leave, you know I’ll always come back.” Despite the beginnings of sleep clouding Keith’s mind, he had a certain nagging suspicion that Lance was talking about more than just their current seating within the common room.

He knew they sometimes had to take on dangerous missions and that no one’s safety was every really guaranteed. Maybe that’s what he meant? But how could he promise that?

Just before either boy could fully drift off to sleep, Lance let out one last whisper, “And I always know you’ll come back too.”

A few hours later, Shiro found the boys in that exact same spot, tangled up together on the common room couch, peaceful and intimate and relaxed. It was almost a shame to wake them up and pull them from whatever wonderful world they had created in sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, I know the prompt is specifically unrequited love, but that is very much not my cup of team, soooo this happened instead.  
> Also, I'm taking these prompts from a list of 365 writing prompts so I know the assumption is one prompt every day. But I'd rather put in a few days of effort on one prompt and create something I actually like, something I can be proud of, than rush something out every day and put out 365 days of crappy stories. I just don't write that fast and don't have nearly enough free time. College, ya know?  
> Anyways, I hope you enjoyed and let me know what you think!  
> -Demi


End file.
